Tata Steel’s Jharia Division commissions Paste Filling Pilot Plant

Jamshedpur, Feb 16: Filling unapproachable coal voids poses a significant challenge for coal miners, leading to safety concerns in and around underground collieries. Currently, there is no efficient technology available to address this issue.

Tata Steel’s Jharia Division recently commissioned a Paste Filling Pilot Plant with a capacity of 10 M3/h to fill these voids using self-levelling flowable paste made from fly ash, cement, and additives. 

The Plant was inaugurated by D B Sundara Ramam, Vice President, Raw Materials, Tata Steel, in the presence of Sanjay Rajoria, General Manager, Jharia Division, Tata Steel, and Dr. Prashant, Senior Principal Scientist, CSIR-CIMFR, on February 15, 2024, at Digwadih Colliery, Jharia, Jharkhand. This marks the first in India where Tata Steel is exploring this technology for coal mine void backfilling.

Unlike the current sand slurry backfilling method that leads to borehole chocking, segregation, and heaping issues during filling of unapproachable coal voids, the paste filling technology achieves higher efficiency through its self-levelling and controlled spreading of cemented fly ash paste. The paste of different composition and flow properties will be pumped into the empty voids below the railway line at Digwadih Colliery. The success of this trial will pave the way for the development of mobile setups to fill voids of more than 1 km in length at the current site, and potential applications at production and mine fire sites.

This technology not only offers an environmentally friendly alternative to river sand for mine backfilling but also aims to enhance safety in unapproachable voids beneath railway lines, highways, and permanent structures, situated above underground collieries. Developed through collaboration between Tata Steel, CSIR-Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research (CSIR-CIFMR), and IIT-Kharagpur, the technology shows promising prospects for future applications.

Among others present at the inauguration were Narendra Kumar Gupta, Chief (Jamadoba Group), Mayank Shekhar, Chief (Sijua Group), Rajesh Chintak, Chief HRBP (Raw Materials), Dr. Veerendra Singh, Principal Scientist (Research and Development), Tata Steel, and Dr. Santosh Kumar Behera, Senior Scientist, CSIR-CIFMR, Dhanbad.